- The cancer specialist hired by the state -- to the tune
of $290,000 -- to study cancer rates in the Pottstown area has halted his
study without completing the second phase.
-
- Dr. Andrew Baum, deputy director of the University of
Pittsburgh's cancer institute, confirmed this week that he will not conduct
the second part of his epidemiological study in which he would have interviewed
area families struck by cancer.
-
- Baum said he stopped working on the study in November.
-
- He also said he has been "asked" by the Pennsylvania
Department of Health not to discuss the results of the first portion of
his study, in which he examined statistics of area cancer cases listed
in the Pennsylvania Cancer Registry, "until it is accepted."
-
- Messages left with state Health Department officials
were not returned before press time.
-
- Baum said he submitted the first portion of his report
to the Health Department months ago and that he is nearly finished with
the final report he will submit to the state.
-
- He said he is concerned about how the entire issue has
been handled at all levels, noting "it has been fraught with missteps
almost every step of the way."
-
- Baum said he will be concerned about his reputation as
a cancer researcher "if it takes much longer" for the state to
release the results of the first phase of his study.
-
- Despite his involvement with the emotionally charged
health study of the effects of the nation's most famous nuclear accident
at Three Mile Island, Baum said he has never had an experience like the
one he had trying to conduct this study here.
-
- "This is the first time I've faced anything like
this. It was a completely unique experience," Baum said.
-
- High on the list of unusual events was the fact that
the state Health Department, to which Baum was submitting his study and
with which Baum had some disagreements about his preliminary results and
methods, was conducting its own study.
-
- In November, Joel Hersh, director of the state Health
Department's Bureau of Epidemiology, called a public meeting at Pottstown
Middle School at which he and a flock of state staffers and scientists
released their own study.
-
- With confusion about the subject of that meeting, a paucity
of copies of the Health Department's results and a failure of their presentation
equipment, few characterized the November meeting as a successful communication
with the community.
-
- "I didn't know about the meeting in November, and
we were not invited to attend," Baum said. "And I didn't know
they did their own study."
-
- Hersh has up until now not released any aspects of Baum's
study, which Baum said is beginning to cause him some concern.
-
- The Health Department's public relations office, which
said it would respond to a request for an interview with Hersh, did not
do so before press time.
-
- Baum made headlines in August, and problems for himself
and his study, when he told a reporter that his preliminary findings "found
some evidence of higher (cancer) risk in children" in the Pottstown
area and noting that "there were small elevations in all cancers."
-
- Hersh immediately instructed Baum not to make any more
statements to the media regarding the results of his study until the state
and Baum were in full agreement on the meaning and method of Baum's findings.
-
- But Baum's remarks seemed to validate an earlier analysis
by Joseph Mangano, a Long Island statistician who reviewed the information
for free at the request of the Alliance for a Clean Environment.
-
- Mangano's analysis was the basis for ACE's claims that
childhood cancer rates in the area have jumped by more than 90 percent
in recent years.
-
- The Health Department study, by contrast, which used
the same cancer registry statistics as Baum and Mangano, concluded that
the overall cancer rate in Pottstown is no different from that of the rest
of the state.
-
- The state study looked only at cases in the 19464 area
code, which therefore excluded cases in Chester and Berks counties as well
as Montgomery County municipalities of Douglass, New Hanover and Limerick.
-
- The conflicting conclusions, and the state's surprise
release of its own study, have made conducting interviews with cancer victims
in the area useless, said Baum.
-
- "It's not worth completing," he said. "The
situation has totally biased the community."
-
- And that is why he is anxious for the results to be released,
he said.
-
- "I've done a study and it has results and I've been
asked not to share it, but I'd like to see a tangible timeline for releasing
it and if this goes on much longer, I will be concerned," Baum said.
-
- Taxpayers may be concerned about paying for a study whose
results are not released to the public and whose parameters are duplicated
by the department that is supposed to review the independent study.
-
- Baum said he "is not sure" how much of the
$290,000 price tag he consumed conducting the first phase of the study.
-
- Baum conceded that one problem with the study is that
the number of cases being examined are so few.
-
- "The numbers here are very small, and you can find
yourself trying to make a statistical conclusions from four or five cases,"
he said.
-
- http://www.pottstownmercury.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=10991546&BRD=1674&PAG=4
61&dept_id =18041&rfi=6
|
